A preliminary development proposal for 675 Old Town Road received support from the Sicamous planning and development committee, with members looking forward to getting the official application.
At the April 17 meeting, Greg Kyllo presented his plan to build a small lot subdivision for “attainable housing” to the west of the industrial park by TA Structures, using the surplus space to put modulars there.
The development would consist of 48 lots about .07 acres in size, with the units approximately 900 to 1,500 square feet on permanent foundations and meeting B.C. Building Code requirements.
“This is basically just to meet the demand both for the workforce housing that’s required in Sicamous, and also to meet some of the demand of the seasonal workforce that does come to our community on an annual basis,” Kyllo explained, adding that it would be built as TA employee housing, but “there would be no restriction on just for our own utilization.”
Coun. Ian Baillie, who owns two restaurants in town, liked the idea of the purpose built housing and agreed it’s needed in Sicamous.
“I absolutely support this, and I think… we actually have to start figuring out how we can use all commercial lots and industrial lots to add in employee housing,” he said. “That’s one of the things we should be looking at, because that is the way of the future if you’re going to try to keep that workforce.”
While the proposal is still in the initial stages, Kyllo has been working with Keith Funk, president and senior planner at New Town Planning, on the particulars that include some variances. Funk said part of the property backs onto the Agricultural Land Reserve that requires a 15-metre landscape buffer, which they would like to change to about 4.6 metres to increase the available property. He also asked that council look at creating a new zoning to better fit the proposed usage.
“There’s no zone that fits this initiative really well, so we would like to move forward working with the planning team to develop a comprehensive development zone for this type of employee housing,” he said, adding that he’s already drafted a proposal.
Kyllo said they’d like to get moving on the project as soon as possible, with Funk estimating they could have the formal proposal ready in about four to six weeks. He added that his civil engineering team has already been working on the servicing plan for the site and he’s ready to move forward onto the detailed design.
“So I would say this has a high probability of being able to break ground by the fall of this year,” Funk said of their timeline if the project is approved.
“I think you have full support of the planning committee, it looks like 100 per cent,” Coun. Gord Bushell said. “And we’d love to see this application come forward.”
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